Benghazi: The Arab Spring Shows Its Face
It is the nature of men to create monsters, says virtual counter-hero Harlan Wade of F.E.A.R., and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers. Mary Shelley and the Golem come to mind, but what happened in Benghazi on Tuesday is more reminiscent of Bram Stoker. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens did not create it, but he was directly involved in helping unleash the dormant monster which destroyed him. His death is the paradigm for the U.S. policy vis-à-vis the world of Islam since 9-11.
“In the early days of the Libyan revolution, I asked Chris to be our envoy to the rebel opposition,” Hillary Clinton said in her eulogy. “He arrived on a cargo ship in the port of Benghazi and began building our relationships with Libya’s revolutionaries.” As an American liaison to insurgents who had just started to fight Qadafy’s forces, Stevens was instrumental in turning a local revolt into a fully-fledged rebellion. As ABC News notes, he was “literally on the rebels’ side while the revolution was at its most vulnerable.” Introducing himself as ambassador in a State Department video four months ago, Stevens said that he “was thrilled to watch the Libyan people stand up and demand their rights” during the uprising.
A remarkable aspect of Mrs. Clinton’s statement is that in her scheme of things, it is perfectly normal for U.S. Government agents to sneak into a foreign country that the United States recognizes as a sovereign state and with which it has normal diplomatic relations in order to incite rebellion against that country’s government. Let us imagine for a moment her reaction, and that of the U.S. media, to the news that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has sent one of his diplomats to help the Sunni rebellion against al-Maliki in Iraq or FARC insurgents in Colombia. That man’s death at the hands of his protégés would prompt a deluge of Schadenfreude; a smiling Mrs. Clinton could gloat that “he came, he saw, he died.”
More significant is the cowering reaction to the outrage in Libya from the American officialdom. The assault on the U.S. compound in Cairo came first with the frenzied Muslim mob scaling the walls, tearing down and burning the American flag, and raising the inscribed black banner of jihad in its place. The Embassy responded with a statement, which is indicative of the State Department esprit de corps: “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”
Not a word of reproach for the rioting mob inside the gates. Condemnation was reserved solely for the makers of an obscure and poorly produced video allegedly insulting the prophet of Islam, Muhammad. Available on Youtube for months, it merely provided an excuse to perpetuate the attack on the Embassy.
President Obama’s reaction to the carnage in Libya a day later was worthy of his middle name: “While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.” His Secretary of State followed up in the same vein, reassuring the murderers that we feel any pain they might be enduring from the “insult”: “The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
It is striking that in both cases an apologetic condemnation of the video came first, thus implying that the mob had a valid cause to be enraged.
It is equally striking that when three Russian women blasphemed at the altar of Christ the Savior cathedral in Moscow, denigrating the religious beliefs of hundreds of millions of Christians, the only words of condemnation coming from Washington—and from its media chorus—were reserved for the two-year prison sentence they received. (As it happens, that sentence was far more lenient than the one likely to be passed in an American court on a trio of Aryan Brothers acting in a similar manner in a mosque, or a synagogue, or a Black church.)
The media reaction to the bloodshed in Benghazi did not deviate from the Obama-Clinton line. “Islam’s answer to the killing of US envoys in Libya,” an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor on September 12, called on Muslims to “assert their faith’s teachings of peace and mercy as the answer to such hate”:
While Muslims worldwide may be angered by acts of religious bigotry, most know that killing in the name of Islam is hardly favorable to Islam... Yet Muslim fears of blasphemy remain strong… Each violent response should compel Muslims to assert Islam’s teaching of tolerance… Until enough peace-minded Muslims stand up for an interpretation of Islam that sees freedom as necessary for the flourishing of faith, these governments will continue their campaigns of intolerance or wink approval at mobs of zealots....
This article is full of nonsense parroted in other MSM organs. It is taken as axiomatic that Islam teaches peace, mercy and tolerance. Writing seven decades ago, Arthur Jeffery dismissed as “the sheerest sophistry” the same tendency apparent among some Western scholars in his own time. He understood that the “peace” that Muslim believers are called upon to implement is impossible unless it is established under an all-pervasive Islamic rule. Such “peace,” resulting from jihad, does not merely have the meaning of the absence of war: it is also a state of security that is attainable only once Islam defeats all infidels and conquers their lands. Contemporary apologists for Islam have moved on, however: in our time, not accepting their “Islam is peace” mantra is in itself deemed “Islamophobic” and “intolerant.”
CSM editorialist asserts that Muslims fear blasphemy, without explaining what Muslims mean by that word. Their definition of “blasphemy” is any irreverent behavior toward persons, objects, rites, and beliefs that Muslims revere. To put it succinctly, being non-Sharia compliant is blasphemous. Not accepting the divine origin of the Quran is blasphemous. Applying the standards of natural morality to Muhammad’s illustrious career is blasphemous. Resisting the imposition of Sharia is blasphemous. In the end, being a non-Muslim is blasphemous.
The expectation that “enough peace-loving Muslims” will stand up “for an interpretation of Islam that sees freedom as necessary for the flourishing of faith” is absurd. Orthodox, mainstream Islam demands total, abject submission to the word of Allah and to the example of his prophet. Such submission is the only true freedom in the world of Ummah. Any other “interpretation of Islam” is heresy and disbelief. But willful self-deception continues. A stream of Western media calls on “peace-loving Muslims” to stand up to their murderous coreligionists started right after 9-11, and it will continue even if Manhattan is vaporized in a mushroom cloud.
In the video made to introduce himself to Libyans shortly before he took up his post as ambassador last spring, Christopher Stevens said he was looking forward to his assignment “as we work together to build a free, democratic, prosperous Libya.” As a fluent Arabic speaker with two previous tours of duty in Libya, if he believed what he said, he was an imprudent man. The Arab Spring has shown its true face, as we have known all along that it would. The monster is unleashed. Every person in our foreign policy-making establishment is responsible for the bloodshed in Benghazi, not least the victims themselves.
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Thank you Sirja for speaking the truth.
Here is how the New York Times defended offenses towards Roman Catholics in October of 1999 with the infamous Brooklyn exhibition while calling for more art that “challenge[d] the public”:
“To be sure, many citizens of conscience find parts of the Brooklyn exhibition repugnant, and it is understandable that many Roman Catholics would find Chris Ofili's image of the Virgin Mary offensive. Others would agree with our colleague William Safire that while the Brooklyn Museum has a right to show what it likes, the administrators have been clumsy or needlessly provocative. Yet a Daily News poll shows that the majority of New Yorkers support the museum by a ratio of two to one. Those numbers show a broad-based support for New York's role as the nation's cultural capital. A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts, an institution completely disconnected from art in our time.”
Yadda Yadda Yadda
There is precedent for this type of event: in 1973, Arafat slaughtered two US diplomats, and the State Department Arabists responded by...sweeping it all under the rug and forging ahead with their beloved keffiya-wearing quisling.
The same will happen here. This was not unlike when the tiger trainer is attacked by one of his tigers. Stevens dedicated his career to pro-Islamist imperialism, and his pets got out of control, but the Arabists will not be deterred.
And contrary to the beliefs of some here, the sponsoring of Islamic fanaticism is not an Israeli-driven, pro-Zionist policy any more than the policy of the 3rd Reich was a pro-Jewish policy.
Anyone who has seen the footage of the controversial movie knows that it is too trivial, too humorless, too poorly produced, and too weak to even offend anybody. It's akin to being offended by insults coming from a socially awkward man with a terrible stutter.
No, I don't believe the rioters are offended. Nobody is that easily offended. This was obviously the opportunity to further weaken and emasculate the rest of the world by demanding that it kowtow to every whim they have. This way, they can do outrageous acts with impunity and everybody else become meeker, shyer, and more afraid of offending them. They become the stronger ones, and everyone else becomes the weaker subject of theirs.
I mean, when the big high school bully looks at his prey, grins, and says, "Did you just scowl at me?", we very well know he is not offended by anybody's scowling. We know that he is intimidating others, because he enjoys it and he enjoys seeing others back down and apologize to him. Same thing here.
By the way, Dr. Trifkovic, I am surprised by your familiarity with videogames.
@Mr. Reavis: I wonder how the NYT would stand for a hypothetical paper that "challenged" its monopolous position as daily general interest broadsheet in the City.
A New Jersey libertarian girl I met grumbled about Rudy Giuliani's stance as such: "He censors ART!" There's more I could tell you about this girl, but the less said, the better. It is difficult to fathom the depth of the evil and moreover sheer UGLINESS in the intellects and the hearts of the types the NYT is written for - and the sheer number of the infested.
@Arthur: You have a point. Still, get off your hobby horse; so far on this thread YOU are the only one who has mentioned Zionism, and that topic can only add a needlessly aggravating element to the discussion.
@Prateek: The school bully analogy is appropriate to an extent, but it is also true that some people (and creeds) have absolutely no sense of humor.
Islam is leveraging political correctness, i.e. the founder thereof is being insulted, and moving with that leverage their penchant to violence and domination, something Christendom has known about since the faction boiled out of the far deserts in the 7th century. They leverage political correctness, an abstract goddess found only in the West, two fold: they get the "victim" of the violence to grovel as is seen in all of these apologies about someone having made them so angry that they kill, maim and destroy; and they get the Hobbesian states, against whose agents and citizens the violence has been committed, to go after their own citizens as if, by having produced a poor quality video running for less than twenty minutes, these citizens, foolish though they may be, were agents of Goebbel's Ministry of Propaganda. I would predict that in the aftermath of these ongoing violent acts by folks dedicated to Islam, it will become more and more difficult to tell the truth about Islam from the pulpit, in history classes or even on fora such as this.. Just today, the Obama administration is spinning the the violence against its own agents and citizens as caused not by the actions of the United States government or the Obama administration but by unworthy American citizens, Christians, at least in name, of course. Of course, the cause of the violence, the "Ursache" of the violence, lies at the heart of Islam itself; this will never be addressed.
I find the link Mr Trifkovic embeds for the offending video leads to the announcement that "this video has been removed by the user". Obama asked Google/Youtube to pull the video but Google refused, except for those countries where it violated the law. Somebody got to the producer.... I read that the terms of his probation were that he avoid the internet for 5 years or back to jail. There is more than one way to stifle free speech.
Why does it aggravate you? I've seen enough lies about Jews on this website. The only way to engage in rational and policy-based discussion is to purge such poison from one's brain to to recognize it for what it is: big-lie nonsense pushed by the Arabists at the top to get you to not notice or to scapegoat others over their pro-Islamist policy.
I don't understand why anyone would think that US leaders are *victims* of Islam. *Users* of Islam? Certainly.
Victims? Not in my opinion. The US sponsors and funds them. They'll do whatever their masters want them to do. Islam is basically a luddite ideology that would die out on it's own--if the most ruthless imperialists would stop using it for their nefarious reasons.
Here beyond a shadow of a doubt is blowback inaction, the unitended consequences of our Libya which left four people dead, including the ambassador. A skillful candidate could use what happened in Libya against the President in the campaign. But not only is Mitt Romney not a skillful candidate, but he's also called for the U.S. to do the same thing in Syria, remove a dictator facing a revolt which would empower Salafists. And not only that he wishes to use U.S troops to do so. Obama just used drones. I guess that's the main difference between the two parties these days.
Arthur: "Islam is basically a luddite ideology that would die out on its own.... If only..... "
NUTS !!!! Lying about your enemy is not helpful. Luddite is a western term used by NE Yankees to disparage Southern agrarians who yamkees resent.It has nothing do do with Islam and their ability for scientifc development, to steal it from others, or to reduce the knowable to quantity. Loving your enemy has 2 aspects --- knowing who your enemy is and why they are your enemy.
You seem to think you have a lot of enemies on this forum. Why don't you take your own advice and quit acting like a victim!
Senator Ron Paul says :"Not long after NATO overthrew Gaddafi, the al Qaeda flag was flown over the courthouse in Benghazi. Should we be surprised, then, that less than a year later there would be an attack on our consulate in Benghazi? We have been told for at least the past eleven years that these people are the enemy who seeks to do us harm."
Srdja Trifkovic; 'shortly before he took up his post as ambassador last spring, Christopher Stevens said he was looking forward to his assignment “as we work together to build a free, democratic, prosperous Libya.” As a fluent Arabic speaker with two previous tours of duty in Libya, if he believed what he said, he was an imprudent man."
"equally striking that when three Russian women blasphemed at the altar of Christ the Savior cathedral in Moscow, denigrating the religious beliefs of hundreds of millions of Christians, the only words of condemnation coming from Washington—and from its media chorus—were reserved for the two-year prison sentence they received."
Spreading Freedom..... Freedom to "do" what ? To "speak" what ? To "punish" what? To Worship what? ( not who?) to develope what? to cultivate what? ....... Block in own eye, speck in other eye, etc. ....
Your reply makes no sense to me. Islam is a backward-looking ideology, an oppression of the working class ideology, and it would die out without the financial sustenance of the 'international community' (which mostly seem to be NATO countries, and especially the US government).
The US (with both money and agitprop) has supported the Islamist spring, the Islamic attacks on Serbs, and the Islamic attacks against Jews.
Why is there so little outcry for US leaders to stop funding and lying for Islam?
Islam is a backward-looking ideology, an oppression of the working class ideology, and it would die out without the financial sustenance of the 'international community'.
A critique of Islam is one thing. Your exact word was "luddite." Strictly speaking, a Luddite is a 19th century a British textile artisan who opposed the advent of textile machinery that pitted them economically against automation and low-skilled (read: low pay) workers. A 21st-century Muslim hardly fits this literal bill, but if one must name-call, best at least be precise: "luddite" would more appropriately be applied derogatorily to either a) a particularly cranky technophobe, or b) one who opposes progress on the basis of self-interest (i.e., fearing the competition).
The problem with calling Islam a "luddite" ideology is that to do so misdiagnoses the malady entirely. The stagnant culture you refer to has nothing to do with anyone's selfish interest and everything to do with a highly peculiar conformist ethic and prescriptive sociology.
Why is there so little outcry for US leaders to stop funding and lying for Islam?
Good question. I'm reminded of a review of that ridiculous Our Oldest Enemy tome:
I cringe when Bush talks about bringing sanctions against any nation that supports Islamic Terrorism because THE UNITED STATES IS THE LARGEST FUNDER OF ISLAMIC REVIVALISM AND TERRORISM IN THE WORLD due to our moronic and suicidal energy and foreign policies---Each day the US sends over $100,000,000 per day to Islamic nations that hate our guts. How you gonna win this so-called 'War on Terror' when Bush and friends say they'll continue these policies for years to come?
And the exact word is correct. Strictly speaking, we could stop using a significant portion of the English language because the present day words have their origins in ancient Latin or other languages/situations that no longer apply.
Luddite, per M-W: "one who is opposed to especially technological change". This is the epitome of Islam, which is the exact opposite of Judaism.
Bush did support Islamic terrorism, just like his predecessors. The Islamists despise American citizens, but have no problem with American leaders (who are the ones sponsoring their 'grassroots' anti civil rights movements).
Strictly speaking, we could stop using a significant portion of the English language because the present day words have their origins in ancient Latin or other languages/situations that no longer apply.
... hence why I suggested reasonable parameters for adaptation.
Luddite, per M-W
Yes, M-W is the supreme magisterial authority ex cathedra on the lexicon. But hey, at least one will find "malapropism" in that dictionary.
"one who is opposed to especially technological change". This is the epitome of Islam
I'm wondering whether you miss the forest for the trees, or I just don't write clearly. Either way, this might not be a fruitful point of contention.
Bush did support Islamic terrorism, just like his predecessors. The Islamists despise American citizens, but have no problem with American leaders (who are the ones sponsoring their 'grassroots' anti civil rights movements).
This much is evident.
Arthur, we must always ask why? Why has this old, simple, energetic thing had so much success for so long? Below is one answer I especially admire for its honesty, its story, its early warning to the fools among us and its cold blooded seriousness. Long before our last two generations were making up the ideas about mixing people like a good salad.
We can always wish that our enemy is stupid, cunning, uncivilized, ignorant, abhorent to all human beings etc. and use these facts against him if it is true. But you can not make things up and expect realistic results if you do. Islam is not stupid and ignorant of the sciences. We would not be covertly assassinating their scientists In Iran (or assisting others in doing it) if this were true, or worried about their nuclear technology and ability if it were ture. I think it is always foolish to underestimate your enemy. Or to lie about his strengths unless it is to exploit his weaknesses. So what about Islam ? How and why has it lasted for so long?
" One answer is that it won battles. But winning battles
could not have made Islam permanent or even strong had there not been a
state of affairs awaiting some such message and ready to accept it.
Both in the world of Hither Asia and in the Graeco-Roman world of
the Mediterranean, but especially in the latter, society had fallen, much
as our society has today, into a tangle wherein the bulk of men were
disappointed and angry and seeking for a solution to the whole group of
social strains. There was indebtedness everywhere; the power of money and
consequent usury. There was slavery everywhere. Society reposed upon it,
as ours reposes upon wage slavery today. There was weariness and
discontent with theological debate, which, for all its intensity, had
grown out of touch with the masses. There lay upon the freemen, already
tortured with debt, a heavy burden of imperial taxation; and there was the
irritant of existing central government interfering with men's lives;
there was the tyranny of the lawyers and their charges.
To all this Islam came as a vast relief and a solution of strain.
The slave who admitted that Mohammed was the prophet of God and that the
new teaching had, therefore, divine authority, ceased to be a slave. The
slave who adopted Islam was henceforward free. The debtor who "accepted"
was rid of his debts. Usury was forbidden. The small farmer was relieved
not only of his debts but of his crushing taxation. Above all, justice
could be had without buying it from lawyers. . . . All this in theory. The
practice was not nearly so complete. Many a convert remained a debtor,
many were still slaves. But wherever Islam conquered there was a new
spirit of freedom and relaxation.
It was the combination of all these things, the attractive
simplicity of the doctrine, the sweeping away of clerical and imperial
discipline, the huge immediate practical advantage of freedom for the
slave and riddance of anxiety for the debtor, the crowning advantage of
free justice under few and simple new laws easily understood_that formed
the driving force behind the astonishing Mohammedan social victory. The
courts were everywhere accessible to all without payment and giving
verdicts which all could understand. The Mohammedan movement was
essentially a "Reformation," and we can discover numerous affinities
between Islam and the Protestant Reformers_on Images, on the Mass, on
Celibacy, etc.
The marvel seems to be, not so much that the new emancipation
swept over men as Communism swept over the world of yesterday
, but that there should still have remained, as
there remained for generations, a prolonged and stubborn resistance to
Mohammedanism."
" But wherever Islam conquered there was a new spirit of freedom and relaxation."
That's an Arabist whitewashing, as all Jews, Serbs, and former Hindu/Zoroastrians forced to live as dhimmi know.
The Persians are obviously more recent forced converts, and have retained some of their Zoroastrian spirit (how sad we live in a world that glorifies their historical enemies instead of glorifying the Persians).
Islam has brought only oppression to the masses, gangsterism, and absence of a middle class, where a small effendi rule over a vast fellahin.
There's nothing to glorify, as even the dedicated Arabist Christopher Stevens found out in the end.
No not a whitewash Arthur, but peculiar indeed. Here is more :
"That is the main fact which accounts for the sudden spread of
Islam after its first armed victory over the armies rather than the people
of the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire. But this alone would not account for
two other equally striking triumphs. The first was the power the new
heresy showed of absorbing the Asiatic people of the Near East,
Mesopotamia and the mountain land between it and India. The second was the
wealth and the splendour of the Caliphate (that is, of the central
Mohammedan monarchy) in the generations coming immediately after the first
sweep of victory.
The first of these points, the spread over Mesopotamia and Persia
and the mountain land towards India, was not, as in the case of the sudden
successes in Syria and Egypt, due to the appeal of simplicity, freedom
from slavery and relief from debt. It was due to a certain underlying
historical character in the Near East which has always influenced its
society and continues to influence it today. That character is a sort of
natural uniformity. There has been inherent in it from times earlier than
any known historical record, a sort of instinct for obedience to one
religious head, which is also the civil head, and a general similarity of
social culture. When we talk of the age-long struggle between Asia and the
West, we mean by the word "Asia" all that sparse population of the
mountain land beyond Mesopotamia towards India, its permanent influence
upon the Mesopotamian plains themselves, and its potential influence upon
even the highlands and sea coast of Syria and Palestine.
The struggle between Asia and Europe swings over a vast period
like a tide ebbing and flowing. For nearly a thousand years, from the
conquest of Alexander to the coming of the Mohammedan Reformers (333 B.C.
-634), the tide had set eastward; that is, Western influences_Greek,
and then Greek and Roman_had flooded the debatable land. For a short
period of about two and a half to three centuries even Mesopotamia was
superficially Greek_in its governing class, at any rate. Then Asia began
to flood back again westward. The old Pagan Roman Empire and the Christian
Empire, which succeeded it and which was governed from Constantinople,
were never able to hold permanently the land beyond the Euphrates. The new
push from Asia westward was led by the Persians, and the Persians and
Parthians (which last were a division of the Persians) not only kept their
hold on Mesopotamia but were able to carry out raids into Roman territory
itself, right up to the end of that period. In the last few years before
the appearance of Mohammedanism they had appeared on the Mediterranean
coast and had sacked Jerusalem."
I'd take issue with Belloc's explanation, to the extent that he:
1. overestimates the comparability between 7th-century Byzantine/Levantine/North African society and our own (in much the same vein of the popular imagination which likes to overstate the "decadence" of the late Roman Empire as a harbinger for our own present downfall and commensurately underestimate the barbarian, voir military, aspect);
2. insinuates unduly the extent to which the early spread of Islam, at least outside of the Maghreb, depended on renegade Christians disgusted with theology (even Egypt, the local population of which offered little resistance to the Arab conquest, was not majority-Muslim for several centuries after); and
3. does not adequately, at least as he presents his thesis here, account for the fact that the "solutions" Islam offered to its converts, at least to non-Pagan converts, as often as not were solutions to problems that Islam had created (much the same way the mafiosi who run extortion rackets are the very perpetrators of the dangers they "protect" their tributaries from).
It is however true that Eastern Christendom was beset by serious political chaos and demographic crises and by demographic crises (the Near East was severely depopulated in the wars between the Byzantines and the Sassanids) from early on, making it vulnerable to conquest and submission. The latter in particular would reconquest all the more difficult if not impossible. (Only a millennium later, with the advent of naval and industrial total warfare, were we again able to score military victories in Asia and Africa.) Here, a parallel with the modern West, in terms of political fragmentation and demographic crisis, is fairly appropriate (and serves as a much more frightening, because more tangible, warning).
Another truth to be gleaned from this - though these were your words, Mr. Reavis - is that contempt for the enemy bodes only disaster. It is futile to hate and to give oneself over to blind rage and self-righteousness: this leads to the destruction of others but also of oneself (because "pride comes before the fall").
Finally, again as you say, Islam is not stupid and ignorant of the sciences. We would not be covertly assassinating their scientists In Iran (or assisting others in doing it) if this were true, or worried about their nuclear technology and ability if it were true. Indeed, whatever we think of Islam's capacity to invent modern science, technology and communications, it is hardly fitting to compare the Muslims with Luddites. On the contrary, they seem quite enthusiastic to appropriate these contemporary conveniences to their needs and desires. Al Jazeera much?
Nicholas,
Well of course we can take exception to the one percent who know something about the history of our w civilization and I am including all the college level professors who hate Mr. Belloc in this 1%. But there is a story to tell that 99% don't know or even care that they don't know. Let the modernists look to their own sources of failure, I am not going to assist them. As always, I enjoy your comments --- and was in a humorous mood this morning.
I do not mean to belittle Belloc. As a popular writer and a good Christian, neither of which I claim to be, he has touched more souls than I could ever hope to. Belloc's words on this matter, whatever their shortcomings so far as precision of analysis, is insightful and well-illuminated by the truth that we must take our opponents seriously. Thank you for your kind words and for stoking a nice fire in the conversation; lacking the powerful bit of Chesterbellocian fluid of many of my Catholic compatriots, I had previously become exasperated with it.
Arthur,
Here is some red meat you can get teeth into concerning the enemies of the old western religion so savaged in our day which should remind us how similar the secularist are to the Mohammedons in their intolerance.
By the same writer:
Mohammed was a camel driver, who had had the good luck to make a
wealthy marriage with a woman older that himself. From the security of
that position he worked out his visions and enthusiasms, and undertook his
propaganda. But it was all done in an ignorant and very small way. There
was no organization, and the moment the first bands had succeeded in
battle, the leaders began fighting among themselves: not only fighting,
but murdering. The story of all the first lifetime, and a little more,
after the original rush_the story of the Mohammedan government (such as it
was) so long as it was centred in Damascus, is a story of successive
intrigue and murder. Yet when the second dynasty which presided for so
long over Islam, the Abbasides, with their capital further east at Bagdad,
on the Euphrates, restored the old Mesopotamian domination over Syria,
ruling also Egypt and all the Mohammedan world, that splendour and
science, material power and wealth of which I spoke, arose and dazzled all
contemporaries, and we must ask the question again: why was this?
The answer lies in the very nature of the Mohammedan conquest. It
did , as has been so frequently repeated, destroy at once what it came
across; it did exterminate all those who would not accept Islam. It
was just the other way. It was remarkable among all the powers which have
ruled these lands throughout history for what has wrongly been called its
"tolerance." The Mohammedan temper was not tolerant. It was, on the
contrary, fanatical and bloodthirsty. It felt no respect for, nor even
curiosity about, those from whom it differed. It was absurdly vain of
itself, regarding with contempt the high Christian culture about it. It
still so regards it even today.
But the conquerors, and those whom they converted and attached to
themselves from the native populations, were still too few to govern by
force. And (what is more important) they had no idea of organization. They
were always slipshod and haphazard. Therefore a very large majority of
the conquered remained in their old habits of life and of religion.
... how similar the secularist are to the Mohammedons in their intolerance...
... they had no idea of organization. They were always slipshod and haphazard.
I'm reminded of the words of the deposed Dowager Empress Maria Dagmar in Anastasia, something along the lines of: "Indeed, the Reds were such lousy shots it's a wonder they won the revolution!"
Nicholas,
Our current crop of leaders love to quote Churchill but I wonder if they see him as xenophobic like they describe Pat Buchanan or more suspect of that yankee puritansim than Clyde Wilson? I sometimes wonder if he were still living today if instead of representing a fine hour in English history if he would not be a candidate for the SPLC watch list?
"A large number of [Saudi Arabias King] Bin Sauds followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europes] religious wars.
The Wahabis profess a life of exceeding austerity, and what they practice themselves they rigorously enforce on others. They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahabi villages for simply appearing in the streets.
It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette and, as for the crime of alcohol, the most energetic supporter of the temperance cause in this country falls far behind them. Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina...
Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, June 14, 1921
... and Churchill's speech only targets Wahabbism. Charles de Gaulle might risk penal sanctions in modern France:
"It is all well and good that there be Frenchmen of the yellow, black and brown races. They are a testimony to the fact that France is open to all peoples, that her vocation is universal. But they must always remain a tiny minority. Otherwise, France would cease to be France. We are, after all, in the final analysis, a European people of the white race, of Greco-Roman culture and of the Christian religion. Let's not fool ourselves! The Muslims, have you seen them? Have you seen them with their turbans, their djellabas? You can see quite clearly for yourselves that they are not Frenchmen! What of these birdbrains who talk of "integration"?--yes, birdbrains, little matter how learned they be! Try to integrate oil into vinegar. Shake up the bottle. In the end, they'll just separate once more. Let the Arab be Arab; let the Frenchman be French. Do you really believe that the French national body can absorb ten million Muslims, who tomorrow will number twenty million and the next day, forty? If we "integrated" the Muslims, if all the Arabs and Berbers of Algeria were considered French, what would stop them from moving over to the Hexagon? Why would they not, when the standard of living is so much higher over here? And my own hometown would no longer be called "Colombey-les-Deux-Églises," but instead "Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées!"
~Charles de Gaulle, in conversation with Alain Peyrefitte on the matter of the Algerian uprisings, 5 March 1959 (translation is my own)
I really haven't noticed any secularists that are as intolerant as Islam. US policy for the last 33 years has been to attack secularism--with Islam.
Islam is intolerant, brutal, and savage.
Islam has negligible to zero contribution to the arts, sciences, or technology. There are no Islamist humanitarians, very few Islam-country derived patents.
Nothing glorious about this backward-looking ideology.
I really haven't noticed any secularists that are as intolerant as Islam.
How about Aristide Briand, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Josef Stalin... shall I go on?
Islam has negligible to zero contribution to the arts, sciences, or technology. There are no Islamist humanitarians, very few Islam-country derived patents.
If you want to talk about stagnation and stifling of creative potential, that is one thing. However:
Nothing glorious about this backward-looking ideology.
... "stagnant" is not the same as "backward" or "old-fashioned." Medieval Europe seems a very strange society to us but it was a highly dynamic, fluid and inventive society.
Your problem, once again, is that you have a vague notion that something is foul, but you aren't quite able to put your finger on why. You can't treat a viral disease with antibiotics, if you get what I mean.
Arthur,
Thank you for your posts. I think I understand your position now that I have reviewed all of your posts.
Arthur,
"I really haven't noticed any secularists that are as intolerant as Islam?"
Well, that is too bad. We all need to pay closer attention to this insidious attack because secularism is to the West what Islam is to Israel. You need to think these things through a little more. Pat Buchanan has written his most recent column on this very issue. Maybe you could take a look at it, and get back with me?
Robert,
I definitely do not agree with the analogy, "secularism is to the West what Islam is to Israel."
US leaders have been using Islam to attack secularism. Secularism is being replaced with Islam.
Obviously, Israel is waging no such war on Islam. Islam actually helped run the concentration camps where Christian Orthodox and Jews were put to death.
What do I view as the biggest dangers to the West? It's far too late to stop any of it, but I'd say treasonous leaders that support the usage of Islam to help line their own coffers. Said leaders are mostly self hating Christians and self hating Jews (US media naturally peddles the latter as 'pro Israel' even though they are anything but).
Arthur,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I agree with much of what you write but some of the terms I think are modernists and therefore, ambiguous when they are not meaningless. Self-hating Jews and Self-hating Christians for instance is a popular but meaningless term. When you peal the onion back they are the same thing -- simply ferral men and women attempting to live on bread alone or "making it up as they go along" so to speak. Sometimes there is a pretense towards allegiance to the memory of their ancestors or what was once upon a time simply called "the faith of their fathers" but generally speaking it is only a pretense. There is nothing substantial behind it. A man can read Rabbi Neusner or Pope Benedict and say to himself, this one man is writing about Judaism and the other about the Christian faith. But if the same man were to attempt to understand what (we) call self hating jews and self hating christians he could not conclude anything at all, except perhaps to say " these men are attempting to live on bread alone" or " these fellows are simply eating the husks that the swine did eat."
Now of course we must allow for differences in vocations and in degrees of understanding orthodox faith from reform movements arising from within the various faiths and all the rest of the distinctions that history throws upon us, as burdened Aneas knew well as he was fleeing his own destroyed country. He did however, manage to bring his father, his wife and his gods from the burning citadel. Try sending your kids to school with their gods!! But the term self-hating usually simply means "ignorant of a kind of knowledge", a homeless creature, contemptuous of ancestors, a person without roots, or honor towards the dead,( even his own) . (He is also a man without nostalgia. That term once had a definite meaning associated with heading home or a yearning for ones own home but that is another topic.)
Secondly, while it may be true Israel is does not desire to destroy Islam, that is not the same as saying Islam does not wish for the destruction of Zionism. A healthy Christian culture in defense of the Holy Land and its own might be a more reliable ally for Israelis (or Serbs) than "treasonous (homeless) leaders that support the usage of Islam to help line their own coffers." Thank you again for your reply.
He did however, manage to bring his father, his wife and his gods from the burning citadel."
Well, at least he tried to bring his wife along, which is more than we can say today.